


The Perfect Words

by Buffintruda



Category: Pacific Rim (Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - High School, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Aromantic Character, Asexual Character, Coming Out, Gen, Japanese-American Character, Other
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-12
Updated: 2017-06-12
Packaged: 2018-11-13 11:31:44
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,595
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11184213
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Buffintruda/pseuds/Buffintruda
Summary: Raleigh's vague wording has Mako searching for the best way to come out.





	The Perfect Words

**Author's Note:**

  * For [moonrunes](https://archiveofourown.org/users/moonrunes/gifts).



> For my amazing friend moonrunes. Without her, I would never have watched this movie

_ I love you. _ Raleigh’s words echoed in Mako’s mind as she tossed and turned next to him, unable to sleep despite her exhaustion. What did those words mean?

It had been a long day, and though it was good one, Mako was ready for it to be over. She and Raleigh, as a team of two, had competed alongside the other 16 members of their school’s tennis team in the state-wide tournament. This was the event they had been training for and working toward the entire year. All their practice paid off, because they had ranked very highly. Even more satisfyingly, they had beaten their long time rivals, the Samuel Seabreach High School kaijus.

Why an American school with a white majority had a Japanese word for monster as their mascot, Mako did not know, but it gave her all the more incentive to beat them.

Although it was already late by the end of the awards ceremony, the tennis coach, who was also Mako’s adopted father, took them to a diner across the street from their hotel to celebrate.

Mako and Raleigh, her partner in tennis and best friend, returned early to their room to sleep. Limited school funding meant that the team had to cram into as few rooms as possible. They were supposed to in different rooms based on sex, but since so many of them weren’t straight or cis, Mako’s father decided that such separation would be useless, and even actively harmful in the case of the Wei Tang siblings, since one was a trans woman and another was nonbinary. 

After crawling into their bed, intoxicated on their triumph and exhaustion, Raleigh had whispered, as if overcome by emotion, “I love you, Mako,” and kissed her forehead before promptly falling asleep. Sasha and Aleksis, a Russian duo, came into the shared hotel room at that moment, so Mako had pretended to be asleep as they got ready and fell asleep in their own bed.

With her thoughts as turbulent as they were, Mako didn’t know if she could sleep anytime soon.

She didn’t know what Raleigh meant by it, what kind of love he was talking about. Mako hoped it wasn’t romantic. But kisses weren’t generally viewed as platonic, and there was also the point that he was a boy and she was a girl and the odds were in favor of him being attracted to her, despite her initial repulsion the the heteronormativity of that thought.

It wasn’t like Mako had never considered that he might be interested in her that way or even that she, with her feelings towards Raleigh being as strong as were, liked him romantically. But after careful consideration, she had brushed both options off as unlikely. Multiple times. She knew she was aromantic and asexual, and had examined every interaction she had ever had with anybody so many times before to prove it. But Mako couldn’t know Raleigh’s thoughts. What if she had she been too quick to brush off any possibility of attraction from his end of things?

Sinking deeper into her whirling thoughts, Mako’s mind finally drifted, and at last she fell asleep.

...

Throughout breakfast and the four hour bus ride home, Mako kept an eye open for any changes in Raleigh’s behavior, but either he’d forgotten about the night before, or hadn’t thought it a big deal. Knowing which one it was would have been a great help figuring out what exactly she felt about it.

The rest of that Sunday was spent doing all the homework she hadn’t done while preparing for the tournament and trying futilely to forget about anything else. The day passed too quickly, and then it was back to school, back to all the noise and work, back to Raleigh. He didn’t act any differently this day either.

That Monday afternoon after school, Mako found herself in the AP chemistry classroom.

If there was one constant in the world, it was that everyday without fail, Newt Geiszler and Hermann Gottlieb would be in that chemistry classroom for as long as the teacher would allow them to be. If asked, they would claim to be working on Science Olympiad. That might be a believable excuse to some, since the couple did co-captain the school’s Science Olympiad team, but since the rest of the team only met two days of the week for one hour, it seemed unlikely that they could be spending all that time doing Science Olympiad.

They were, in fact, using the time to work on various projects. Newt focused more on a biological side and Hermann on a technological one. Mako was convinced that someday, they would figure out how to perfectly combine their talents and invent the most important thing of the century.

If Mako wanted to talk to her oldest friend for some advice, there was only one place to go.

The classroom was empty, other than Newt and Hermann. It was strange that any teacher would leave them alone in a classroom, especially one where it was the easiest to blow something up, but Mako figured that if they would have destroyed the place, it would have been years ago.

Today was quiet, both of them working separately rather than together which would have inevitably led to bickering. Though she had been friends with both for years, Mako still wasn’t entirely sure whether their arguments were more for show or not. They were dating, but Mako was pretty sure that didn’t mean that their small fights couldn’t be genuine.

Though Mako had known both for the same amount of time, it was Newt she was closer to, so it was him she approached.

“Hey, Mako!” Newt greeted, looking up from the microscope he was squinting through. “What’s up? Congratulations on your tennis victory, by the way.”

“Thank you,” Mako said. “How are you doing?”

“Just lovely,” Newt said, looking entirely too smug. “Hermann doesn’t want to admit it, but I proved that I was right about the—”

“Yes, yes, alright,” Hermann growled, too affectionately to be scary. “She doesn’t need to hear all the details. It would be boring to any non-scientists.”

“If you say so,” Newt smirked. He turned to whisper to Mako, “I totally proved him wrong.” Back at a regular volume, he continued “Anyway, why have you come here for?”

“I was just—I needed to ask you...” She looked around. The room was still empty besides the two of them and Hermann, who had turned back to his work. If he overheard this, she wouldn’t mind, Mako decided. They were as good as alone.

“Is something wrong?” Newt asked, his tapping fingers stilling.

“No,” Mako said. “Well, probably not. Do you think Raleigh likes me romantically?”

“Did something happen?” Newt asked. “Because I would say probably not, but not a definitive ‘no,’ except you must have had a reason to ask this now. And whatever caused that question to make you so uncertain that you came to me might change my answer.”

“Not a huge reason,” Mako said, a little embarrassed to share what had felt like a private moment. “It could have been interpreted either way, romantic or not, I mean. But I started wondering and I thought that I’d like to know an outside perspective on this.”

“Have you told him you’re aroace?”

Mako shook her head. Though she did not go out of her way to hide it, her orientation was not something she shared with many people. She considered it none of most people’s business. Newt knew because he was also asexual, and her father did because she needed to know if he would be okay with it. (He was.) And despite their closeness, Mako hadn’t known Raleigh very long. Raleigh had transferred into their school only three months before. She trusted him, but the subject had never really come up.

Newt was far more open with his orientation. He answered anybody who asked or corrected anyone who was mistaken, telling them that he was homoromantic asexual. The attention that Newt’s openness drew wasn’t something Mako wanted to live with, but Raleigh wasn’t just anybody. She would be willing to come out to him.

“Obviously don’t do anything you’re not comfortable with,” Newt said. “But maybe just be like ‘hey Raleigh, I’m aromantic and asexual. Fun fact.’ And then either he’s okay with it or I punch him in the face. Hermann will back me up.”

Mako glanced at Hermann who rolled his eyes fondly.

“I don’t think that will be necessary,” Mako said. “Raleigh’s a good person, and he had no issues with you being asexual.”

Newt shrugged. “You never know. It’s always good to have backup. But if you tell him, either he doesn’t like you romantically and there’s no problem, or he does and now he knows he has no chance so he can move on. It’s pretty much win-win.”

“That could work,” Mako said carefully. She could find no fault with it, other than it was a little hard to casually slip a coming out into a conversation.

“Awesome,” Newt said. “Now did you just come here to ask me advice, or do you have time to help me with this experiment? It’s just that Hermann says it can’t work and is refusing to assist me, but this is a two person job.”

Mako ended up staying in the chemistry classroom for nearly an hour longer.

...

After dinner, Mako and her father spent that evening in comfortable silence together working in the living room. The tv played on in front of them since neither one was doing anything too mind consuming. Her father was imputing grades into a computer while Mako practiced her kanji.

Until she was about six, Mako had lived with her birth family, her  _ okaasan _ and  _ otousan _ . Living in America, they spoke some English, enough for her to do well in the early grades of school, but their main language at home was Japanese. After they died, she was adopted by Stacker Pentecost who had learned to speak Japanese to better communicate with her and ease her transition into his life. Because of that, Mako was fluent in speaking and understanding Japanese. However, she couldn’t read or write much because her parents had died when she was so young and her adopted father hadn’t pushed her into learning it. Halfway through high school, Mako made up her mind to try learn. She found a few books and websites and began.

It was supposed to be a nightly thing, copying the strokes of a character over and over again, whispering the meanings and multiple pronunciations to herself as she did, to drill it into her head. Tennis or other school-related things got in the way of making it a completely regular thing, but she did it whenever she could. Oftentimes, her father would join her in the living room to do his own work, mostly grading or lesson planning, until it became a tradition whenever they had the time.

On the screen in front of her, the woman stifled a sob.  _ “Please, Frederick! I can’t live without you.” _

“You’ve lived your entire life, minus two days, without him,” Mako said, glancing up. “I think you’ll survive.”

“What are the odds that Frederick  _ won’t _ have a life-changing revelation, come back to save the day, and have Elina take him back without a second thought?” her father wondered.

“Less than the odds of Chuck Hansen admitting that he doesn’t actually despise Raleigh,” Mako replied.

Elina’s friend entered the room on screen, another guy that Mako was pretty certain was only there to make the romance a love triangle.

_ “Please understand,” _ Elina cried, as the other guy tried to comfort her.  _ “Everybody falls in love. But what Frederick and I have... this is something more!” _

“Yes...” her father drawled, glancing at her. “Falling in love. That is something everyone does.”

Mako felt a shy grin slide across her face. Coming out to her father, all in all, had been a very positive experience. She knew she was lucky to have someone so accepting. He had listened to all she had to say, respected all of her wishes, and now had reached the point of comfort where he could joke about this kind of thing with her. It was nice having people that were close to her know. Even though Mako didn’t want to announce that she was aroace to the whole world, maybe the time to tell Raleigh had come, even without the whole possibility of romantic feelings thing on his part.

Newt’s suggestion had been a good one, to solve the problem Mako was most concerned with. Logically, it was the option to go with, but Mako hadn’t been able to release all doubts about sharing something so personal at first. Except now she remembered again that people knowing her orientation wasn’t just about the awkwardness of telling them, but of everything nice that could come afterwards. That wouldn’t happen with every coming out, Mako knew. But Raleigh was accepting of queer identities and generally supportive of her. It didn’t guarantee everything would go perfectly, but it made the chances of things going well fairly high and the possible rewards worth the risks.

Sometimes Mako wished she could be more carefree, more like Newt who was open and out to everyone. Still, coming out was bigger for her, and she couldn’t treat it like a casual decision, like what to eat for dinner tomorrow. If she was going to come out to Raleigh, it wouldn’t be just to ward off any possible interest, but also because she wanted to. And, as Mako realized that evening, she did want to.

...

Coming out, Mako decided, was easier decided than done. With Newt, it had been simple. The year before, when he started dating Hermann, Mako asked if he was gay. Before then, he had never given any hints to his sexuality. Newt had responded, “Yes, but I’m also asexual.”

Mako had said, “Me too. Though I’m aromantic and ace.” And that had been that. It hadn’t been planned or even thought of much, just a spur of the moment decision.

Since her closest friend knew, Mako had figured that she should tell her father and then spent a week agonizing over how to do so. One night, her father asked her if something was wrong because she had been acting stressed. Mako hadn’t even realized that she was behaving any differently, but her father had eerily good powers of observation. She told him everything in a conversation that lasted the rest of the evening.

Both had been, over all, great experiences at coming out, better than Mako could have hoped for when she first discovered an online ace community. However, it also meant that she had no experience starting the conversation.

She needed to find the perfect words to say, the ones that would convey exactly what she was and how she felt about it. Mako needed a way to say it so she wouldn’t overwhelm, confuse, or turn Raleigh away from her. Somehow, it hadn’t been this hard for anything else she had wanted to say to him.

Mako wondered if it would be easier if it was anybody else. She and Raleigh talked about many things from their teachers to family to current politics to tennis to their future. But somehow dating, marriage, and sex had never come up in these conversations. Mako might have come out earlier if they had.

But it was useless to ponder the difficulty of coming out to someone else right now; it was  _ Raleigh _ she wanted to tell, and there was nothing about their conversations that Mako actually wanted to change.

There was no way of subtly introducing the topic, Mako decided. It wouldn’t come up naturally, and trying to manipulate a conversation until it did would be too unpredictable and be more trouble than it was worth. Her orientation wasn’t the biggest thing in her universe, Mako reminded herself to no avail. She just needed to treat it like it was a simple thing. Casually toss it into conversation like, “Hey. You know how Newt is asexual? Well, I am too. Except, unlike him, I’m not attracted to anyone romantically either. I’m aromantic.”

Mako knew that it would not be that simple.

...

With tennis practice over, the time that Mako and Raleigh naturally spent together was far more limited, but they didn’t let that stop them. Mako hadn’t known him much at all until their practices started, though they did share an English class. This meant that most of their shared time was centered around school or tennis. It wasn’t until they had to decide where to hang out in the afternoons that Mako realized it was a problem.

It was a nice day, warm enough for a T-shirts and shorts, so Mako suggested a nearby river-side park. Raleigh, having moved to the area so recently, had never gone before.

On such a fine afternoon, there were too many people around for it to quite be considered peaceful; nevertheless, there was a feeling of tranquility as they walked away from the more crowded areas of the park. When the last path ended, they wandered further down the smooth rocky banks until there were no more people.

“Do you think it’s warm enough to swim here?” Raleigh asked.

Mako shrugged. The day was very warm, but in the spring, the water still tended to be too cold for her comfort.

Raleigh took off his shoes and rolled up his jeans and jumped into the river. He gasped, leaping right back onto dry land, as Mako hid her laughter. “It’s not too bad,” Raleigh defended himself. “I just wasn’t expecting it.”

As if to prove a point, he waded back out until he was up to his knees. “It’s nice once you get used to it.”

“If you say so.” Mako debated the pros and cons of joining him. It would be fun, but she wasn’t looking forward to stuffing wet, sandy feet back into her socks and shoes. More importantly, it felt harder to have a serious conversation in the water. Part of her didn’t want to think about it. It felt like if she didn’t think at all about coming out, she could pretend to herself that she had just forgotten about it and put it off to a later time.

Feeling like she was about to jump into the deepest parts of the icy water, Mako took a deep breath and said, “Raleigh? Can I tell you something?”

Sensing the seriousness of her question, Raleigh waded back. He sat on a nearby rock, his feet still in the water. “Sure. What is it?” he asked, gentle concern in his voice.

A million openings rushed through her head.

‘This isn’t that big of a deal, but I wanted you to know—’

‘I don’t feel any attraction to people. I’m—’

‘I’ve been thinking for a while, and I thought I should say—’

‘We’ve never talked much about sexuality, but just so you know—’

But none of them seemed to fit. All of them said too much and not enough and nothing that they said was very necessary. She wasn’t one to waste words when getting to something as important as this. All they would to was muddle everything up, add a little bit more time before she actually said what she wanted to say. There were no perfect words to introduce what she wanted to tell him. So what Mako said was simply, “I’m asexual and aromantic.”

“Really?” Raleigh met her eyes, delight shining through. “I’m aromantic too!”

“Oh!” Mako laughed in relief. That was her original question answered. Raleigh didn’t like her romantically. He hadn’t suddenly hated her for being aroace. He was aromantic as well. Relief and joy immediately replaced every inch of worry and fear.

“I didn’t expect that we’d have this in common too,” Raleigh said, grinning excitedly. “But I shouldn’t be so surprised. Not being interested in romance or sex, with me or in general, was part of why I liked you.”

It was the same way for her, Mako realized. “Me too!”

She had a sudden urge to tell him everything aromantic-related that she had ever felt. Now that she finally found someone who might understand, she wanted to share her experiences and to know how Raleigh’s aromanticism affected him, learning what parts were similar to her and what differed. But that could come in time.

“You know, with what happened at the hotel, I was worried for a little bit.” Even as Mako was saying those words, she wished she could stop them and take another moment to think about them before releasing them into the air. She wasn’t even sure if Raleigh remembered what he had done then.

“Right. That,” Raleigh said, embarrassed. “I was hoping you had forgotten about it. I thought you were already half asleep. I’m sorry about that. I didn’t mean it romantically, as I’m sure you know now, with me being aromantic.”

“It’s fine,” Mako said. “You’re my closest friend. I love you too.” It was the most natural thing to say, now that she knew it couldn’t be misinterpreted. They were simply the truth.

Raleigh opened his mouth as if to say something but then stopped. There were no perfect words for this moment either. Instead, he smiled at her. It was an emotion too strong to describe, and the two of them shared it on that quiet summer day.


End file.
